Libertarian Home holds speaker meetings on the first Thursday of every month. The most recent of these meetings featured a talk by Tim Evans. You can watch and listen to the whole of this talk, which lasts 33 minutes, here. At the other end of that link you can also read a summary, by Libertarian Home’s Simon Gibbs, of the first big chunk of the talk, which consisted of Tim’s take on Jeremy Corbyn. Since that posting went up, Simon Gibbs has done another summary, of what Tim Evans said in the same talk in connection with tomorrow’s Budget.

Videos play to the strengths of human beings as communicators. We have evolved with the innate ability to talk, provided only that we start out hearing others talk, and most of us are pretty good at talking. But we have to learn reading and writing, especially writing, and even the most fluent and practised writers struggle to write down every worthwhile thought that they have ever had.

An extreme case of this is the libertarian historian and IEA apparatchik Stephen Davies, whose movement-building activities cruelly cut into his history-writing time. But: good news, there is a video of an excellent talk given by Davies to Libertarian Home in June 2013 about The History of Individualism, in which he says many of the things that he has not had the time to write about. Better yet, follow that link and you will also encounter a summary by Simon Gibbs of what Davies said. There are many other videos of Steve Davies talking and I recommend all of them. But if you want to learn quickly about a particularly good talk by Davies, follow that link.

Quite aside from their excellence at getting things said that otherwise might not be said, it’s good to see and to hear people whom you are interested in, rather than merely to read what they have written. You get to see what they are like, and something of how they feel about the world as well as how they merely think about it. When speaking, people are often able to say things, of an elusive yet true nature, with a sense of just how sure they are or are not about it all, and in a way that sometimes even surprises them a little. (I sure I am not the only one who sometimes feels that I don’t know what I think until I hear what I say.) You don’t usually receive as much information by watching and listening to someone on video as you would if you had actually been been there, although you sometimes see and hear more, rather as watching sport on television can often be more informative, in some ways, than actually being there. But the point is that video is good in the same kind of way that face-to-face contact can be.

All of which is part of why videos now abound on the internet. They communicate a lot. (The above also explains the popularity of programmes like Skype.)

The trouble is, a lot of videos can take their time, especially videos like the ones I have just been linking to which are simply videos of talks. Take their time? What I mean is: they take your time, often in large gobs.

Eric Raymond is the reason I’m here. He’s the guy I found while learning about Linux who gave a name to my vague sense of injustice at having to pay tax and taught me that a libertarian is a thing. Googling “libertarian UK” after reading his web site is how I found Samizdata, and found out that there were libertarians on my doorstep. He taught me that anarcho-capitalism is a thing. And that it’s okay to like guns. And that it does not make me some sort of lefty for enjoying messing about with Free Software. He explained the economics of it and gave it a better name: Open Source. And he’s out there propagandising, and making some of the software that keeps civilization ticking and not being hacked. And his code is all over the place and you probably use quite a lot of it every day.

But he has a problem.

First, Obamacare killed my wife’s full-time job and the health insurance that came with it. Then Obamacare drove personal health insurance costs into the stratosphere, so I now pay more per month on it than I do for my mortgage. $973 a month is what it costs us to go to a doctor, which is ridiculous and every politician who voted for this disaster should be hung from a lamppost. Until it’s repealed or collapses, though, the money has to come from somewhere.

You get more of the things you encourage. I think ESR needs to be encouraged. And luckily, you can, via his Patreon page.

Also, on his blog post about Patreon, there is some interesting discussion about Obamacare:

It’s darkly ironic that one of the original arguments for Obamacare’s outlawing of inexpensive “junk insurance policies” was that many had deductibles that were “too high.” So now we’ve got expensive policies with high deductibles that are too high…

The short version is that Obamacare mandates have added so much to an employer’s overhead for anyone full-time that the full-time job is being effectively abolished. Even professionals like lawyers are being fired to be replaced with contractors who have to buy their health insurance a la carte.

It’s a double whammy – first Obamacare destroys secure employment, then it saddles people living hand-to-mouth with ruinously high costs. Our health-insurance premiums are higher than our mortgage.

Reporters without Borders has produced a useful handbook for blogging in an unfree environment. We will be adding a sidebar link to this useful resource which has some technical tips that may be of interest to people in places where Big Brother tries to controls everything you read.

Jack Whitham of the University of York offers the code for rather a snazzy self updating banner. (Be warned, you may have to edit out some carriage returns if you cut and paste. I did.) It looks like this:

The No2ID campaign has established an e-petition aimed at 10 Downing Street demanding the end to plans for imposing mandatory ID cards and pervasive state databases recording a vast range of what you do in your life.

The No2ID campaigners have taken the line of principled objection, given that the government seem to have decided that there is no longer any room for public debate and refuses to engage with serious – and growing – civil liberty and privacy concerns with the scheme. The Home Office have not met once with civil liberties organisations yet say their concerns have been addressed whilst at the same time avoiding public meetings but at the same time having private briefing with technology partners for introducing the schemes.

Take a stand and make your voice heard while you still can at www.no2id-petition.net. Time is fast running out.

The No2ID launch was held in the basement bar of The Corner Store in Covent Garden, a spacious restaurant/pub catering for the tourist trade. The attendance was good, with more and more interested parties walking in as the clock crept past midday until the small room was overflowing.

The two speakers were Neil Gerrard, Labour MP for Wolverhampton, and Debbie Chay, the Chair of Charter88, representing the civil liberties movement, now repackaged as civil libertarianism, to distinguish itself from the Real Thing. Both provided telling anecdotes on the idiocies and dangers that an ID system would represent. Nevertheless, there was a telling gap in their analysis. Both were unable to provide a convincing story as to why the government was introducing this measure. Without understanding the motives behind the development of the ID scheme, it will prove far more difficult to halt or reverse.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Guy Herbert, a name not so unfamiliar here. His own fear was that the ID scheme will depend upon the establishment of databases that will require a far greater intrusion into the private lives of citizens if the state is to monitor them effectively.

My conclusions on the meeting were hopeful and fearful. As with any new campaigning organisation, there is a lot of work to be done in order to achieve the aim of defending civil liberties in the UK. Mark Littlewood, their National Coordinator, quipped that there were few organisations which could boast the Libertarian Alliance and Globalise Resistance as supporting organisations. Yet, as I talked with a couple of campaigners from the Left, they proved unresponsive to my thesis that they had to attract the middle classes: people who read the Daily Mail or supported the Countryside Alliance, if they wished to succeed. Since most of the activists were Left rather than Right in orientation, this may skew the activities and demands of No2ID.

Secondly, the lack of analysis may prove a boon for libertarians. Neil Gerrard asked “why anyone would wish to introduce ID cards?”. The answer is complex: strategies to control the individual by the state, which has an increasing need to obtain information (once deemed private) in order to further this end. Boondoggles such as the evil machinations of private capitalists who could make vast profits from any contracts awarded by government should remain a sideshow. They will not convince people fearful of a terrorist bomb. Libertarianism provides the strongest resource for crafting a message that can appeal to all of those affected: from men with the wrong colour of skin who will be stopped even more often and asked for some form of ID to the yound, single professional who never encounters the state, until this drops through their letterbox.

However, if there is a bomb in the United Kingdom on the scale of Madrid or the WTC, all bets are off. The government will argue that a terrorist atrocity requires the development of the surveillance state, backed up by authoritarian laws.

Paul Smith is a man with a profound interest in driving and road safety. As a driver myself I, too, have a vested interest in these matters. Whenever I depart from point A I much prefer it to be overwhelmingly probable that I will reach point B with all my favourite limbs and organs in situ and functioning as nature intended.

The British government and its various agencies claim that they share this interest as well. Moreover, they assure us that the solution to the problem lies with forcing everyone to drive more slowly and punish those drivers who fail to comply. Hence the virus-like proliferation of the ‘GATSO’ or ‘Speed Camera’ which (just by complete coincidence I am sure) has also raised tens of millions of pounds for the public coffers from already over-taxed motorists who infringe blanket and arbitrary speed limits.

In response to the wave of discontent this has caused, the government, the police and the various lobbyists that support them, have doggedly stood their ground and explained that, yes, it is all very regrettable but the point of the GATSO’s is most assuredly not to raise revenue (no, perish the thought!) but merely to save lives. In other words, they are relying on the canard that freedom must be sacrificed in order to achieve safety.

Well, they are wrong and Paul Smith has made it his business to prove, publicly and beyond argument, that they are wrong. His website, Safe Speed, cuts a swathe through the cant and the piety:

We have never seen any credible figures that put road accidents caused by exceeding a speed limit at even 5% of road accidents. We object to speed cameras mainly because they fail to address the causes of at least 95% of road accidents. The Government claims of 1/3rd of accidents being caused by excessive speed are no more than lies according to the Government’s own figures.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

Mr Smith has amassed a treasure trove of documentary, audio and video evidence that entirely discredits the myth that Tax Speed Cameras are anything whatsoever to do with either road safety or saving lives. In fact, so confident is Mr Smith in his own research that he throws down this gauntlet:

So here’s the challenge. We promise to publish here (in this box, on the first page of the web site) web links to any serious credible research that implies a strong link between excessive speeds and accidents on UK roads.

So if you are one of those people who thinks that the GATSO is a life-saver, you know exactly what to do.

In the meantime, more power to Paul Smith and his campaign for common sense and reason. When we eventually win this battle, the victory will be due in no small part to the dedication and integrity of people like him.

A reader alerted us to an interesting vote happening on the Radio 4 today programme: vote for a law to be submitted to the House of Commons. So far there are five ‘Law Ideas’ and at No.5 is a bill to allow homeowners to defend their property with any force, by deleting “reasonable” from the phrase “reasonable force”.

Freedom is a basic value but its champions and its expression will appear in many different forms. White Rose, understandably, has recently concentrated on the technological developments that may undermine our civil liberties, in conjunction with the connivance of the authorities.

Other freedoms include the capability of fulfilling one’s desire to pursue research in the sciences, whether natural or social, without suffering repression from the state. Abdolkarim Soroush, a noted Iranian intellectual, can claim to be the founder of studies on the history and philosphy of science in Iran. However, as the biography on this website delicately notes,

Soroush’s lectures in this mosque continued smoothly for six years. Then owing to certain sensitivities, the weekly programme was suspended and attempts to resume them have so far proved unsuccessful.

Shami Chakrabarti, the new director of Liberty, is planning a monitoring operation on Britain’s giant retailers. Chakrabarti, formerly a high-flying legal advisor to two home secretaries, takes up her new post today.

Liberty is to set up a unit to monitor the experiments being carried out by various retailers with radio frequency identification technology. M&S and Tesco are pioneering the use of tiny microchips, the size of a grain of sand, which are inserted into the packaging of goods or sown into the labels of clothes.

Chakrabarti believes Britain, already the world leader in the use of CCTV cameras, is set to become the ‘surveillance capital of Europe.’

As from today Liberty will be monitoring the supermarkets and big chain stores. If we think a legal challenge can be mounted to stop their experimentation then we will make it. We will certainly be in touch with the company executives and we will do all in our power to let customers know what is happening. It is up to consumers to decide whether or not they want to boycott a particular store or chain but the companies must be made aware that this is the risk.

“Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form their own intelligence agency; to gather, sort and act on information they gather about the government,” said MIT graduate student Ryan McKinley, who developed GIA under the direction of Christopher Csikszentmihályi, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab’s Computing Culture group.

“Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government by the people and for the people,” McKinley said.

The method that McKinley uses is pilfered straight from the government itself.

GIA site users can submit information about public figures and government programs anonymously. In an attempt to ensure the accuracy of submitted data, the system automatically contacts the appropriate government officials and offers them an opportunity to confirm or deny submitted data.

But like an FBI file, information is not purged if the subject denies its veracity; the denial is simply added to the file. McKinley wryly added that those government officials who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear from GIA.

A nice touch!

The site itself is a bit limited; also, when I tried it out it was very slow. It might have underestimated the demand for it. This is a work in progress, but it’s a great start. This gives Big Brother a taste of his own medicine, and we need something like this in Australia.

Who Are We?

The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.